


Appointment of the Elect

by rei_c



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-06-01
Updated: 2006-06-01
Packaged: 2018-01-15 02:22:32
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,418
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1287682
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rei_c/pseuds/rei_c
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When a boy is found on the Scottish Moors and carries the wounds of Christ, there are more questions than answers.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Appointment of the Elect

**Author's Note:**

> Warnings: Blasphemy, obviously. Semi-graphic descriptions of bodily injuries. Unexplainable PoV shifting and a definite disregarding of the Aristotelian Unities.

“Do you have any idea why you’ve been feeling this way, Father?”

“I feel that God is preparing me for something, but I don’t know what, exactly. Would it be blasphemous to say that I wish He’d be clearer sometimes?”

“Not at all, Ryan. We are only human, after all. Keep me informed, and consider yourself shriven.”

“Grazie, Cardinal.”

\--

Father Donegal found him on the moors. The priest had gone out for an early Thursday morning walk, away from the manse and the constant sniping of his housekeeper. It had rained overnight and the air was still so thick with fog that he almost missed the boy, except for the acrid tang of blood in the air and the shriek of ravens in the grey sky above. He crossed himself, and walked over to the boy, knelt by his shivering body, and laid two fingers on the boy’s neck. Still alive; a pulse, but weak. 

He’d taken the boy back to his home, a house blessedly clear of Mrs. MacGillivrey, and run a bath for the child, whose face was dirty and tear-streaked, whose teeth chattered long after Father Donegal had helped him undress and get into the hot water. It wasn’t until he’d begun cleaning the child off, though, that he saw the wounds on each wrist, the jagged edges of holes that went clear through skin and bone, holes that looked as if they were just starting to heal, albeit much too slowly. Scratches on his forehead, deep ones, but no more and no less than brambles might have caused, had he fallen on them. Or had them pushed onto him. Nothing on his feet or legs though, and if he had stopped there, then Father Donegal might have laughed at his imagination and attributed the sores to nothing more than the damage that wandering on the moors for weeks might cause. 

But then he moved, bowl in hand to run water down the child’s back, and stopped, unable to think of any reason why such a young boy, one who looked no more than fifteen or sixteen, would have whip marks on his back. No, not whip marks; it looked as if the child had been flogged or scourged. Whole strips of skin were missing, chunks of flesh taken out, bone glistening in the light, but the boy had somehow survived, somehow lived long enough—on the moors, no less—to begin healing. It made no sense, and yet, somehow, it did. The moment crystallised with perfect clarity in Father Donegal’s mind as he dropped the bowl into the bath. Water droplets danced into the air—he saw them rising in slow motion—and then hit the boy’s back. 

The boy screamed, high, thin, and wordless, and a force blew Father Donegal back, across the room, slamming him into the wall even as a wind started blowing out of nowhere, making the boy’s shaggy black hair dance. “Mea culpa!” the boy screamed, then began sobbing through the words as he repeated them over and over again. “Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea culpa.” 

Father Donegal wasn’t sure how long he sat there, propped against the wall. He didn’t know how long the boy rocked back and forth for. He couldn’t think of anything, until he saw the child’s teeth chattering again, heard the crying slow down into hitched, laboured breathing. Hoping the moment had passed, he crawled back over to the bathtub, wincing at the ache in his body, and helped the child out of the cold, dirty water, into some dry clothes, and then into bed. 

“What is your name, child?” he asked, but the boy shook his head and fell asleep. 

\--

“Ryan, you’ve got to be joking. There hasn’t been a reported case of stigmata in ten years, and that was eventually proven to be a hoax. You’re a good priest—I would never have expected something like this from you.”

“Then you’re inclined to believe me? Cardinal, please. Everyone I’ve talked to keeps pushing me to someone else. I wouldn’t have let it go this far if I didn’t think there was a chance it might be real. The child is here, in my house. He can’t remember his name; he bears wounds of the crucifixion. If not stigmata, then he is at the least possessed. Please, all I want is an investigator, someone more suited to puzzling out things like this. I’ll stand by whatever he says.”

“Do you believe this is what the Lord has been preparing you for, Ryan?”

“I can’t help but think so, Cardinal. I know it sounds like lunacy, but…”

“All right, Father. I’ll contact the Order. Someone will be there in a week.”

“Grazie, Cardinal. God bless you.”

\--

When Father Caracci walked through the back door, he didn’t expect to see the child sitting peacefully at the table with Father Ryan; then again, it was lunchtime. He greeted the other priest, then the child, not willing to admit that the sight of those unnaturally green eyes unnerved him. 

“Father Donegal, it has been a while,” the visiting priest managed to say before he was wrapped in a hug. 

“Ah, Gustavo, my friend. It has been _far_ too long. I’m glad they sent you. Come, sit down. Join us for some lunch. It’s nothing fancy, but Adam has proven himself to be proficient in the kitchen.” 

Father Caracci sat down at the chair Father Donegal pulled out for him, and looked at the child. “An honour to meet you, Adam.” When Adam said nothing, merely held his glance a moment longer before he stood and headed towards the stove and the pot of stew sitting on it, Father Caracci turned to his colleague and raised an eyebrow. 

“He doesn’t speak,” Father Donegal murmured. “Not much, at any rate. I couldn’t just keep calling him ‘child,’ could I?”

The three finished their meal before Father Caracci turned to Adam and asked to see his wounds. Adam held out his hands and Father Caracci looked under the bandages, nodding slightly. After looking at Father Donegal, who smiled encouragingly, Adam rose out of his chair and turned around, lifting up his cotton shirt. Father Caracci couldn’t stop the gasp and murmured prayer as he studied the whip marks. 

“This is as healed as they ever get,” Father Donegal said. “They break open and bleed every afternoon, around three.” He said that last part slowly, and Father Caracci looked at the priest, eyebrow raised. 

“The hour of our Lord’s death,” he murmured, and turned to look back at the wounds, leaning forward to smell them. Father Donegal nodded, even as Adam closed his eyes. 

\--

“When you said he doesn’t talk much, you weren’t exaggerating,” Father Caracci said that night, sitting in the living room with his colleague. 

Father Donegal snorted. “I haven’t heard him say one word in English since I found him last week,” he said. “But he has said a few things in Latin. The day I found him, he performed the ‘Mea Culpa,’ I think without even realising what he was saying. Since then, well. The wounds on his wrist have bled twice, and he cries out the entire time they bleed.”

“What does he say?” Father Caracci asked, unable to stop himself, unsure what the expression Father Donegal currently wore meant, exactly. 

“ _Crucio_.” Father Donegal looked down into his empty cup of tea, then at the other priest. “He screams and cries and the only word in all of that noise is the Latin word used to sentence our Lord to His death. In what context Adam means it, I’m not sure.”

“Pilate’s question, the crowd’s demand, or Christ’s suffering,” Father Caracci murmured, looking at his own empty teacup. After a moment, he shook his head and sighed. “I think this calls for something stronger than tea. He remembers nothing?”

Moving to fetch a bottle of Laphroaig, Father Donegal said, “If he does, he won’t talk about it. He might dream, but I’ve not noticed any nightmares. He doesn’t sleep, though. I’ve caught him in the sanctuary a number of times when he should’ve been in bed.” Before Father Caracci could ask, he added, “He doesn’t have an issue with hearing the Gospel, I’ve blessed him with Holy Water, and he’s received the Host. He seeks peace—or absolution—at the foot of the Cross. I doubt this could be a case of possession, but this isn’t my area, Gustavo. I’m a simple priest with a small flock in the middle of nowhere. Cases of the stigmata weren’t in this parish’s job description.”

“You are not just a simple priest, Ryan,” Father Caracci murmured as his host poured Laphroaig into two tumblers. Father Donegal gave one to the other priest, who smiled his thanks and stared into the fire.

\--

The next afternoon, Fathers Donegal and Caracci were sitting in the living room again, while Adam was in the kitchen, making tea. Father Donegal was in the middle of clarifying one of Father Caracci’s points about St. Catherine of Siena’s ecstasy, and Adam screamed. As the two priests ran to the kitchen, they heard ceramic shatter on the wood floor, heard the splash of tea on cabinets, and a voice, sobbing “Crucio,” over and over again. 

When Father Caracci skidded into the kitchen, he found himself unable to move as his mind attempted to comprehend the picture before him. He started with the floor, eyes casting about and catching on the pieces of mugs swimming in puddles of tea. Those made sense, as did the drops of tea sliding off of the cabinets and chairs, but the thin stream of scarlet dripping down and mixing in with the tea, that didn’t belong. Father Caracci followed that stream upwards, until his eyes focused on Adam’s wrists. The bandages were soaked. Likewise, Father Caracci could see crimson spreading through the thin boy’s t-shirt, from the back to the front, irrevocably and irreversibly staining the white. Father Donegal didn’t give more than a cursory glance at the child’s back, instead ripping off the sodden bandages on Adam’s wrists and tossing them to the side, pressing tea-towels to the holes instead. Once Father Caracci found his feet, he moved around Adam, lifting up the child’s shirt. 

None of his training, none of the other investigations he had led, could prepare him for the sight, the sight of a child’s back splayed open to the bone along with the smell of blood and tea, the sound of sobs and the cry of an execution, the taste of the Divine in the back of his throat. It overwhelmed him, until he could do no more than hold a towel to the child’s back and whisper the _Sanctus_ over and over again. 

\--

_You’re their Saviour? Fine. I’ll teach you to act like one. Which should we start off with, the rod or the cat o’ nine tails?_

\--

“You’ve seen him bleed,” Father Donegal said that night, as the two stood in the doorway of Adam’s room, watching the child as he slept. “What do you think, Gustavo? Is it true stigmata?”

Father Caracci stirred slightly, sighed. “If it is not, then I am God’s fool,” he finally said. “I would like to take him to Rome, Ryan. I know he has settled into something of a routine here, but…” He trailed off into silence again, as Adam moved, whimpering slightly as his newly-bandaged wrists rubbed against the mattress. 

“He will be more comfortable with the Order,” Father Donegal murmured, when Adam had calmed again. “With people who understand.”

Father Caracci frowned at the implication that presented, that Father Donegal was somehow unable to understand, but instead asked, “Does he express doubt? Does he question what has happened to him? Or what will?”

The Scottish priest shrugged, turning and gesturing for the other priest to follow, as they made their way back to the living room and a roaring fire. “He kneels at the altar and raises his eyes in adoration or supplication, I’m not sure which. He cooks and cleans, reads the Holy Scriptures, and sometimes goes for walks on the moors. If he rails against the stigmata, I have never seen it. He acts as if—” Father Donegal paused, shook his head. “He acts as if he both thinks he deserves this, and as if he has no idea where it comes from or why. But you’ve seen how he handles both. Take him to Rome, Gustavo.”

\--

Though the Order’s home was in Rome, outside of Vatican City, Father Caracci elected to move Adam to one of the Order’s other residences, in the Languedoc-Rousillon region of France. With Adam in the room, he told Father Donegal that there were more scholars and investigators there that might be able to confirm whether this was truly a divine indwelling. Father Donegal said he understood, but when the boy left, his smile turned troubled. 

“Not Rome?” he asked, curious to know what had changed from before. 

“I spoke with my Superior,” Father Caracci replied, alluding to the Abbot General of the Order. “He impressed upon me the danger that our house in Rome might represent.”

“You don’t want him near the Holy Father,” Father Donegal said, guessing. 

“We don’t want him in Rome,” Father Caracci replied evenly, apparently willing to undergo this inquisition, almost as if he had expected it. “Not until we know, and not until we can prepare for any implications it will present, either way.”

Father Donegal leaned back in his chair to consider that. It made sense, of course. The political and ecclesiastical implications of having a true stigmatic under the Order’s hands, passed on to them by Cardinal Vachon, and found by an infamously reclusive priest in the Scottish moors were incalculable. And Cardinal Vachon’s connection to the Order was known in Rome, but not widely spoken of outside and was not met with an overly enthusiastic response. He valued his quiet emeritus-ship just as Father Donegal valued his quiet parish existence, something that would necessarily change if Adam’s exposure was not handled well, and he preferred not to be connected in the Church’s mind to the Cardinal, not with the questions that the connection would raise about how, and why, and since when. 

“Our _schŏla_ will make sure to…handle things,” Father Caracci said, reassuring his colleague. “They’ve had practice, after all,” he added, a wry smile curving on his lips, which Father Donegal echoed a moment later, inclining his head at his brother priest. 

\--

“I hear that your houseguest is leaving tomorrow, Ryan.”

“Yes, Cardinal. Father Caracci has elected to take Adam to the south of France, where others can help in the investigation.”

“And you, Ryan? How has this affected you?”

“Cardinal…I admit, my life will resume a semblance of normality when Adam leaves. But I will always remember this as a time when I was living close to a mystery, perhaps a Divine Mystery. Although, living this close to something unexplainable will have a large impact on my future.”

“Oh?”

“I’m going to be placing advertisements for a new housekeeper.”

“Very well, Ryan. If you wish to discuss this, ever, please contact me. We must all be on our guard against the Devil’s machinations, but I pray that the Order finds this is a genuine visitation.”

“As do I, Cardinal. Grazie.”

“Be blessed, Father.”

\--

They’d taken a private aeroplane from Stirling down to London in the morning, refuelled and were flying over France when Adam’s back split open and bled at three. Father Caracci had gathered the child in his arms as Adam rocked back and forth, crying the words of the Mea Culpa in a Latin broken only by sobs and hitched breathing. Despite the bandages, blood had gotten all over Adam and all over Father Caracci’s black suit, small droplets staining the aeroplane furniture and carpet as well. The airport at Saint-Hilare-de-Lavit was thankfully a small landing strip near but outside of the village, used almost exclusively by the Order. 

“It will only be a few minutes’ drive to the Order’s home,” Father Caracci had reassured Adam as he peeked out of the plane, eyes darting about with all the panic of a cornered animal. “We couldn’t put the landing strip closer because of city ordinances, but we’re the only ones who use it. Everyone else in Saint-Hilaire is content to walk around town and drive if they must go further than that.” 

Their car drove towards a building built into the hills, another car following them, and Adam looked outside, eyes wide, as the caravan drove above Saint-Hilaire-de-Lavit. He could see shepherds on the far hill, dozens of sheep scattered about and grazing, and his eyes dropped on all of them before their car eased to a stop at a crossing. There was a man outside, walking as if he had all the time in the world, hands in his pockets, blonde hair falling over his eyes. Adam’s gaze faltered as he studied the man, Father Caracci leaning over to see what had made his young charge look so troubled.

“Draco Malfoy,” he said, and Adam turned to look at the priest before gazing out of the window again. “His family owns some property between Saint-Hilaire and Saint-Michel-de-Dèze, the nearest village; well, I suppose he does—his father died two weeks ago. He spends most of his time in England, but when he’s here we often see him hiking these parts. Monsieur Malfoy is passingly familiar with a few of the shepherds who graze between the two towns, and they say he’s quite nice, despite his last name. Malfoy,” Father Caracci said, repeating himself when Adam looked at the priest quizzically. “In French, it means Bad Faith.”

Adam nodded once, but as the man moved out of their way, the cars drove on. Neither Adam nor Father Caracci noticed the way Malfoy stopped and paled upon seeing whose nose was pressed against the window of the car heading up to the Order’s Saint-Hilaire retreat home, both child and priest too intent on the errant drops of blood leaking from Adam’s forehead. 

\--

_You will say it, Saviour, every time this hits you. Can’t remember the words? Here, I’ll help. Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa. Scream it, Saviour._

\--

The _schŏla_ kept him in the infirmary for the five days after he arrived. They had been thorough with their initial physical tests, taking blood and hair samples, methodically charting his wounds and recording when they bled, how fast they healed, the exact measurements of each split in his skin. His back still bled every day at what was three o’clock in Scotland, four o’clock in France, and the holes in his wrists broke every third day, though the time of day it happened varied. The angry red stripes littering his forehead refused to heal, but neither did they break open, save that once in the car and then another time, at midnight, when he was in the sanctuary with only one watcher. 

As for the other tests, Adam passed every one. He could look upon and hold a crucifix without issue, just as he could step into a holy place without trouble. Holy water, the Host, rosaries—none of them bothered him or affected his composure. In fact, many of the investigators told Father Caracci just how much more at peace Adam seemed when kneeling in their little church, gazing up at the simple crucifix. The only thing the investigators questioned, the only thing left to them, was why Adam didn’t speak. They’d all heard him scream and sob, so he could if he wanted, but when they asked, he stared at them with eyes green as envy until they turned away.

The day he was finally allowed to go outside, they’d waited until after his afternoon bleeding and then sent him out with Father Caracci. The two strolled about the property, Adam silent as always, Father Caracci appreciating the quiet. The sun shone above them, lighting up a cloudless sky rich with the smell of mountain air and vineyards, and neither of them heard anyone else outside until it was too late. 

“ _Stupefy!”_ Adam heard, and Father Caracci fell to the ground beside him. He turned, mouth open in wordless panic, and as he heard the strange word again, the scars on his forehead tore open and spilled blood.

\--

“I’ve stopped the bleeding,” a gentle voice said, and Adam opened his eyes slowly, his head pounding. It was the same man from before, Draco Malfoy, and the man was studying Adam as if…as if he knew him. “Well, Severus did, actually, but…” He trailed off, reading the confusion and fear in Adam’s eyes, and sighed. “I suppose it was too much to hope that he’d leave you with your memories,” he murmured, and Adam’s eyes widened. 

“What was that, Malfoy?” another, different voice called out, and its owner peeked his head around the door. Adam raised an eyebrow at the sight of shockingly red hair and freckles, and Malfoy snorted. 

“He’s awake, Weasley,” Malfoy said, and the other man came in the room, grinning widely until Malfoy added, “Don’t get your hopes up. He can’t remember me.” The redhead… Weasley? …stopped mid-stride, face falling. “It’s no more than we expected, after all,” Malfoy said, sounding as if he was attempting nonchalance and failing, eyes gliding guiltily to Adam before snapping back to the redhead. “If he’d remembered, don’t you think he would’ve come back to Hogwarts right away?”

Adam’s eyes were flicking back and forth between the two and he jumped, caught off-guard, when another person walked in and joined the conversation. 

“If he can’t remember us, then we’re probably terrifying him,” a bushy-haired woman said flatly, and Malfoy rolled his eyes as Weasley shrugged sheepishly. She turned to Adam, then, and smiled, the action softening her face. “I’m Hermione Granger, and this is Ron Weasley and Draco Malfoy. We knew you before you lost your memories—we all went to school together. Severus Snape is with us as well; he’s brewing a potion so that we can help you with your memories. Not that what I just said will make any sense to you,” she added.

Adam stared, then fell unconscious. 

\--

_Will you not save yourself? Do you willingly remain here? I wonder why, sometimes, Saviour. Is it to repent for sins you never committed, spotless as you are, or to prove a point?_

\--

It could have been day or night when Adam woke again, but his back felt dry, so it was earlier than three the next afternoon. Or so he hoped—the thought that of any stranger touching his back, and those three strangers especially, set his skin to crawling though he wasn’t exactly sure why. He reached one hand up to touch his forehead and felt the smooth spread of bandages pressed there, small uneven lumps underneath that must have been scabs. When the woman came in, carrying a cup that seemed to steam, he hadn’t been able to do more than sit up. She sat down without taking her eyes off of him.

“Hello, Harry. Do you remember who I am?” When Adam didn’t say anything, she pursed her lips for a moment, then forced a smile. “That’s all right. I’m Hermione. This is a…cup of tea that we’d like you to drink. It has some herbs in it that should make you feel better.”

She passed the cup over and Adam took it and then looked inside, raising an eyebrow at the way it bubbled. Tea wasn’t supposed to do that. He looked at the woman again, shaking his head as he frowned, and she sighed. “I didn’t want to have it come to this, Harry.”

“ _Imperio_.” 

Adam felt a tingling pressure that seemed, impossibly, to come from behind him, until he realised that the voice saying such strange words was the same one that had knocked Father Caracci unconscious, and was also Malfoy’s. There was a momentary pause when Adam felt the pressure grow, but then he screamed, dropping the cup on the floor, huddling on the bed as his hair began to ruffle in a sudden and unexplainable wind. The pressure stopped, though whether at the scream or the breeze that felt so good on his back, he wasn’t sure. He heard Hermione stand up and move closer, freezing where she was when he shuffled backwards, out of her reach. 

“I’ll tell Severus to make another, and next time we’ll make sure he’s unconscious when he drinks it,” Malfoy said. He added, almost as an afterthought, “ _Stupefy._ ” 

Adam’s world went black.

\--

He was still in that bed as his eyes peeled open again. Hermione stood beside him, and smiled as he struggled to sit up, moving back to sit on the chair she’d occupied last time. 

“Harry?” she asked, and watched Adam for any sign of recognition. When he gave none, she fidgeted. “It should have worked,” she muttered, and Adam listened even as he moved to get comfortable. “Harry? You can’t remember anything? What if I said the name Lucius…?” she paused, watching Adam, who didn’t react to that. “If I said Hogwarts? Or Dumbledore? Or even Voldemort?” 

No reaction from Adam, and Hermione exhaled deeply. “Nothing,” she said softly, then nodded to herself as if she had come to some sort of decision. “Harry, I’ll talk, but please, try to remember _something_.”

And she did talk, for what seemed like hours and hours, the time broken only by people—Malfoy and Weasley—sticking their heads in the room every so often, as if to see for themselves how he was doing. She told him stories about how he’d been at school, all the adventures he’d supposedly been on, what his family and friends were like, even how and why he’d started dating Malfoy. None of it provoked even a glimmer of familiarity, and by the time Hermione started talking about battles and wars, she was fast losing her composure. 

“Severus got word to us about Sigfridh’s bones, Harry, and you told us all that this was it, that you could feel the weight of a prophecy being fulfilled. We all went, you and me, Ron and Draco, and the rest of the Order, and fought just outside of York. Minerva died, Harry. Remember? Her and Tonks, and Molly and Bill, masses and masses of Death Eaters.” She paused for breath, tucking a strand of flyaway hair behind her ear, and began pleading. 

“Harry, don’t you remember? You were captured by Death Eaters after the battle. You killed Voldemort using the spell you and Draco found, but Lucius Malfoy took you before we could get to you. He told us everything, Harry: the flogging, the cross, all of the potions to make sure you suffered long after he was done with you. He said…we caught him and he said he couldn’t believe you had enough energy to apparate out of the Manor once we broke the wards down. Don’t you remember?”

He shook his head, eyes expressing a moment’s hesitation before firming into something like pity. 

“I’m not delusional,” Hermione snapped, and Adam merely shrugged. 

“We saw his memories in a pensieve, Harry,” she said after a moment, a dawning sense of fear in her eyes, a turn in her tone from excited and hopeful to horrified. “Harry, we saw what he did to you. Do you remember _any_ of it? He was mad, from all that time in Azkaban, told you that since the world would be calling you a saviour again, he’d treat you like one. Harry,” she said, voice filling with tears, “he flogged you for hours and then poured a potion in your wounds to keep them from healing. He taught you the Mea Culpa because he said it was all your fault. He pulled out a clump of your hair and transfigured them all to glass, each and every one, and drove them all into your forehead. He charmed the wounds to only bleed in the presence of someone magical.” She was crying now, half-hysterical. “Harry, he nailed you to a fucking cross and you don’t even remember, do you?”

She left, soon after, face splotchy and shoulder slumped, after Malfoy came in and half-carried her out, glaring at Adam. 

\--

_Crucio, crucio, and again, crucio!_

\--

Adam slept and when he woke again, a pale man with greasy black hair was studying the bleeding wounds on Adam’s forehead. He wore robes that looked almost like Father Caracci’s and Adam looked up at him as if he hoped that he’d been rescued. The man lifted the bandages on Adam’s wrists, studied them and smelt them, said, “There is a cure for the potion, Mr. Potter.” Adam sat up and pulled his knees to his chest defensively as the man continued, black eyes implacable. “It will be painful, but I can stop the bleeding and heal you. Thankfully Lucius used a potion I am familiar with. Once you return with us, I expect you will make a full recovery in no time. The memories will come when they will, but I suppose you’ll be mucking about Hogwarts and making my life miserable again with or without them.” He stopped talking, then, and pinned his eyes on Adam. 

Adam shook his head and the man sighed, exasperated. “Potters will be the death of me,” he muttered, before reaching for Adam and saying, “You’re going back with us, Potter, one way or the other.” Pain flared in Adam’s forehead and blood began pouring down his face scant seconds later, clumping on his eyelashes, cooling his cheeks. The man paused, but then touched Adam’s arm. The touch made Adam scream and as the man flew backwards, crashing into the wall, Adam began rocking back and forth in his chair, screaming the words of the Mea Culpa. 

\--

This was how Father Caracci and a few of the _schŏla_ found Adam, an hour later: still sitting on the bed; still bleeding; still crying out his guilt to God; a man dead, propped against the wall like a broken and forgotten puppet. Father Caracci began singing the _Agnus Dei_ , and Adam calmed as he progressed through the litany. When Father Caracci whispered the final word, Adam looked up at him, his eyes as red as the bloodtrails on his skin. 

“Come, Adam,” Father Caracci said softly, eyes fixed on Adam’s as the boy returned the gaze, rose off the bed for the first time since he’d woken up in that strange place, and walked. Adam clasped the offered hand when he was within reach and started sobbing, hanging off of Father Caracci and smearing blood all over the priest’s cassock. 

“Shh, child,” the priest murmured, stroking Adam’s hair. “He was an enemy of the Lord, and God has exacted a punishment through you. You are blessed of the Lord, my son. Take comfort.”

Adam nodded, head brushing against Father Caracci’s chest. The priest slung an arm around Adam’s shoulder, holding him tightly as they walked out. The boy burrowed his face in the priest’s embrace, feeling but ignoring the weight of eyes resting on him. The local police were arresting three people, two men and a woman who looked at him with anger and sadness and the faintest inkling of renewed determination. Hermione was crying, still, and Weasley held her, glaring at Adam and the police with equal force. And Malfoy, Malfoy just watched, and the gaze made Adam shudder even as the priest helped him into a car. When it drove off, Adam looked forward and let Father Caracci wipe off his forehead. 

\--

“Father Caracci said that the boy is doing well after all of the…excitement. He’ll be taking Adam to meet the Holy Father soon.”

“The Order’s decided, then, Cardinal?”

“They’re content enough to call it true stigmata, yes. Gustavo confessed that they would be more comfortable if they knew his background, his life, or even why the Order’s enemies would kidnap him so boldly from Saint-Hilaire. Unfortunately the three at the scene disappeared shortly after and dead men can’t speak, especially if they aren’t in any database we can access.”

“Another mystery, Cardinal.”

“They do seem never-ending in this case, don’t they, Ryan. At any rate, this is now out of our hands, and the Holy Father will determine what should be done. I just thought you’d like to know.”

“Grazie, Cardinal.”


End file.
